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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24763996">Nothing I do is Ever Good Enough</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brownies96/pseuds/Brownies96'>Brownies96</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sanders Sides (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Creativitwins, Ficlet, Gen, I projected onto Roman while sad, So much angst, this bad boy can fit so much projection in him</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:55:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>739</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24763996</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brownies96/pseuds/Brownies96</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Roman talks to a mirror after SvS Redux. Title from These Words by Natasha Bedingfield. I just realised I forgot to post it here.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Nothing I do is Ever Good Enough</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“It’s fine,” Roman told the mirror. “I can do just fine without you anyway. Better even, without you all trying to bring me down all the time.”</p><p>“You’re full of shit,” the mirror said back. “You need them, they’re your reason for making things. What would you make without them?”</p><p>“I don’t know!” Roman shot back. “Maybe something that actually makes sense! Because right now down is up and up is down and there is no right decision.”</p><p>“There’s always a right decision,” the mirror said, spite creeping into its voice, “that’s your whole schtick, making the right decision even if it hurts you and everyone around you. That’s what makes you a hero.” Roman flinched at the venom in the words, but they weren’t anything he hadn’t thought about himself before, so he could handle it.</p><p>“So why then,” he decided to ignore the mirror’s tone and pretend that it meant the words it said, “Is nothing I do ever good enough? We already know what Logan thinks of me -” he mimed adjusting glasses and a tie, “‘I’m afraid your ideas are simply nonsensical, we would have a much more reliable future if we abandoned these foolish creative pursuits and returned to real work.’ and Virgil! I don’t think he’s ever liked a single idea I’ve ever had.” Roman mimed a hoodie and slouched, Virgil’s trademark snarky expression plastered on his face. “He just sits in the corner and snarks, it’s easy to criticise something when you didn’t put any of the work in! And Patton!” Roman started to offer Patton’s warm smile to the mirror but it twisted into something so filled with self-loathing that Roman had to hide it behind his usual bravado before the mirror said anything.</p><p>“I try so goddamn hard to meet his standards and suddenly it turns out those standards never existed in the first place. How am I supposed to be good when good doesn’t exist? Why is lying suddenly ok? Why does Janus get to be the triumphant underdog and I get left behind as a defeated villain.” He sat in front of the mirror and dropped the mask, tucking his knees under his chin and peering into his reflection like it might give him an answer he could actually use. “Why doesn’t anything I do work? Why am I the failure?” He met his reflection’s eyes, “Why am I the bad twin?”</p><p>The reflection, identical except for the white streak in his hair and the moustache stared back. They’d done this all the time when Thomas was younger, before Remus had decided that he didn’t care what the other sides thought of him, before Roman had decided the validation was worth pushing Remus away. They’d mirror each other for hours and joke about how interchangeable they were. But that stopped being funny as soon as they’d stopped wanting to be like the other. Or at least, Remus had stopped craving approval like Roman did.</p><p>“If you’re the bad twin what does that make me?” Remus asked.</p><p>“The good one, I guess,” Roman said back, defeated.</p><p>“Ugh, no thank you.” Remus made a face. “I’d rather be myself.”</p><p>“What if being yourself was being what you thought other people needed you to be? What if being myself isn’t the right thing to do? What if I’m not as important as I think I am?”</p><p>Remus demonstrated his ability to always say the worst possible thing by saying, “You’re starting to sound like Virgil.”</p><p>“Well sorry!” Roman shot back, “I didn’t realise he had a monopoly on self-deprecation.”</p><p>“I still don’t get why you need them so much. I make things just fine on my own.” The ‘you should too’ was left implied.</p><p>“Because I want to be good. I want to do the right thing. I want to be good enough for Thomas.”</p><p>“Yeah? Well I want Thomas to cut open an octopus to see if they really have three hearts, but we don’t always get what we want. Janus keeps me on a tighter leash than you keep yourself on and its not the fun kind.”</p><p>There was a knock on Roman’s door.</p><p>“Kiddo, you in there?”</p><p>“Oop! I’d better go, can’t let daddy find out you’ve been hanging around a bad influence like me.”</p><p>It was a testament to how distressed Roman was that he didn’t tell Remus to stop calling Patton ‘daddy’.</p><p>“No,” he said instead. “Stay.”</p>
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